The Frodo Franchise by Kristin Thompson
 
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January 22 : 2009

Some scraps of news from GDT

TheOneRing.net has alerted us to a brief story on MTV.com with quotations from Guillermo Del Toro on what’s happening with the Hobbit project. There’s not a lot of news in it. Basically he says that scripting is still going on, which we knew, and that a short list of actors for Bilbo exists, but none of them has been contacted, which we also pretty much knew. John Howe and Alan Lee (misidentified in the piece as “Adam Lee”) are already working on sketches and designs, and Mike Mignola, who worked with GDT on the Hellboy films and Pan’s Labyrinth, will be collaborating on designs. Perhaps most significantly, there’s an indication of timing given. The story quotes GDT as saying, ‘In about two, three months we’re going to full-on have more designers come on … from outside Weta. But we are already about a good third of the road [along] with some of the creatures–some really interesting and strong designs.” Signs of progress!

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    The Frodo Franchise
    by Kristin Thompson

    US flagbuy at best price

    Canadian flagbuy at best price

    UK flagbuy at best price

    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
    hardcover 978-0-520-24774-1
    421 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 12 color illustrations; 36 b/w illustrations; 1 map; 1 table

    “Once in a lifetime.”
    The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s 17 Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood—the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet—to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight.

    Kristin Thompson interviewed 76 people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

    The Frodo Franchise

    cover of Penguin Books’ (NZ) edition of The Frodo Franchise, published September 2007. The tiny subtitle reads: “How ‘The Lord of the Rings’ became a Hollywood blockbuster and put New Zealand on the map.”